The Almost King

by Lucy Saxon

‘How long do you think it’ll take?’ Drazan asked quietly, eyes still focused on the broken propeller. Aleks hummed.

  ‘A day, maybe two?’ he guessed. ‘It all depends on how bad things are inside once it’s cleared. Luka taught me a lot about the ship, but . . . I’m no mechanic, not really.’ Neither of them said what they were thinking. Zhora would have known. Zhora would have had them back to rights in no time.

  ‘You can fix it,’ Drazan said confidently. ‘You know this ship almost as well as Luka himself. And I’ll help where I can.’ It wasn’t like they had any other choice; the ship was their only way home, and Aleks refused to sit back and accept they were stranded.

  ‘Let’s get this unhooked so we can start shaping the blades,’ he suggested, ‘while we’re still stuck out here.’ It was baking hot but Aleks ignored his sunburn, directing Drazan so the two of them could remove the propeller from the ship. Neither of them spoke but for instructions, and Aleks tried to force his attention away from the plume of black smoke still trailing from the ship, and from what awaited them when they went back inside.

  ‘How far do you think Kara’s territory reaches?’ Drazan asked, startling Aleks.

  He glanced over at the forest. ‘Let’s just work as quickly as we can,’ he said. ‘We’ll deal with things as they come.’ There was no use worrying about it yet. They had bigger things to think about. If they couldn’t fix the ship, they were stranded.

  33

  By the time the pair had the propeller removed and lying on the sand, Aleks was in desperate need of water. ‘We should go back inside,’ he suggested. ‘Get out of the sun, have a break.’

  ‘Get Zhora,’ Drazan finished quietly. ‘OK.’ He let Aleks lead the way back up the rigging rope.

  Everything smelled of smoke, and there was some still lingering in the air, but Aleks found he could breathe comfortably without his shirt over his face.

  He went to the galley first, filled a glass with water and drank it thirstily, urging Drazan to do the same. The pilot seemed dazed, his eyes constantly straying to the doorway. Part of Aleks wanted to go down to the engine room immediately, to get everything over with, but another part wanted to avoid the room forever and just hide away in ignorance. It was too late for that.

  Soon, they had no excuse, and Drazan looked up to meet Aleks’s gaze head on. ‘It’s time,’ he declared. ‘We . . . we shouldn’t leave him waiting any longer.’ Swallowing thickly, Aleks nodded, and Drazan turned for the door.

  He froze at the top of the ladder, hands clenched so tight that his knuckles were white. ‘I can go first, if you want?’ Aleks offered, but Drazan shook his head.

  ‘No, no. I can do it,’ he insisted. He took a deep breath and climbed down the ladder, his palms clammy on the warm metal. Aleks followed, grimacing at the grit still in the air, and felt the breath leave his lungs when he reached the bottom. Zhora’s face was blistered and bloodied, his limbs askew and his clothing charred. From the look of things, he’d been right up close to the propeller mechanism when it had exploded. No wonder he hadn’t made it out alive. ‘Gods,’ Drazan breathed, closing his eyes tightly. Aleks stood close behind, hand on his shoulder in silent support. ‘I always thought it’d be me, y’know? We both did, I think. I was always so reckless, so irresponsible with my own safety, right from when I was a sprog. I always thought if one of us was going to get killed in an accident, it would be me, without a doubt.’

  Aleks didn’t know what to say to that. ‘I’m sorry I got you both into this mess. If I’d known –’ He was cut off as Drazan whirled round to face him, glaring.

  ‘I already told you not to blame yourself!’ he argued. ‘We both made our choice. Don’t cheapen what he did by pretending you forced him into it. He – he was a grown man. He knew what he was doing. These things happen.’

  ‘I’m still sorry.’

  Drazan sighed, shaking his head and turning away from Aleks, moving closer to his brother. He kneeled, stroking Zhora’s sweat-drenched hair.

  ‘We should bury him in the forest,’ he said softly. ‘He would have liked that.’

  ‘Let’s do it, then,’ Aleks agreed. ‘Today, before we have to start fixing the ship.’ As much as the pair would have liked to send Zhora off in the way he deserved, they didn’t have time for that. Kara’s people could find them at any moment, and the longer they stayed the greater the chance of something else happening to the ship. They needed to get home, and quickly.

  ‘Storms, why didn’t he say anything?’ Drazan breathed. ‘If he’d said how bad it was getting down here, I would have landed us in a heartbeat. Idiot.’

  ‘He probably thought he could handle it,’ Aleks said. ‘Probably didn’t want to risk landing somewhere Kara would catch us.’

  ‘Let’s get him outside,’ Drazan urged, getting to his feet.

  Pushing away any discomfort at handling a dead body, Aleks moved to stand by Zhora’s feet, Drazan at his shoulders. He glanced over at the ladder and the trapdoor above it. This wasn’t going to be easy.

  It took a while, but between the two of them they managed to carry Zhora up to the deck and carefully lower him to the ground. Both men were sweating with exertion by the end of it, Drazan rolling his shoulders with a wince. ‘Gods, if I’d known he was that heavy, I’d have banned him from the bakery round the corner back home,’ he muttered drily. Aleks couldn’t help but snort. The sun was high in the sky, and he glanced towards the shade of the forest.

  ‘Did we bring a shovel?’ he asked suddenly. Drazan paused, frowning.

  ‘You know what, I don’t think we did.’ In all their planning, needing to dig a hole hadn’t come up as a possibility. ‘This is going to take a while. I can . . . I can do it myself, if you want to get started in the engine room,’ he offered.

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ Aleks said. ‘I’m not letting you do that on your own. We do it together.’ Drazan smiled, looking relieved.

  The pair carried Zhora over to the trees, walking until they found a small section of grassland that looked fairly undisturbed by animals. While they didn’t have shovels, they did have knives, and Drazan marked out a rectangle in the grass, cutting through the turf easily and pulling it up with his hands until they were left with exposed earth. ‘Storms, why did he have to be so bloody tall?’ he remarked, wasting no time in kneeling down and digging with his hands. ‘This is going to take hours.’

  Aleks helped him dig, not caring about the mud caking his fingers. He was a country boy; he was used to getting his hands dirty. ‘Zhora practically raised me, y’know,’ Drazan said abruptly, not pausing in his rhythm. ‘Ma died birthing me, and our da passed when I was about eleven. Even before that, he was working all the time. Zhora was in charge of getting me fed, making sure I went to school, all that. There was only five years between us, but . . . he would’ve made a good father.’

  Drazan was alone now. He had no one. Except Aleks, of course. ‘Zhora was a good man,’ Aleks said. ‘I was so lost when I came through the tunnels that second time. Hardly a coin to my name, bruised from head to foot – anyone else would have ignored me, or turned me in for my own good. Zhora didn’t even question my situation – just cleaned me up and offered to lie to the kingsguard for me when they came through. It’s not often you meet a man like that.’ A memory rose in the forefront of his mind and he smiled faintly. ‘He said I reminded him of you. At first, I didn’t think it was a compliment, but n– now I know better.’ Drazan glanced up, grinning, though the smile was somewhat wooden. ‘He loved you, you know.’

  ‘Never doubted it,’ Drazan replied with complete conviction, smile growing a little more sincere. ‘He never let me. Even when I hated him for bossing me around.’

  As they dug, Drazan began to tell Aleks stories of his and Zhora’s childhood, the tightness in his shoulders easing with every word. Aleks listened, letting the man grieve through his stories, wishing he could have heard them while Zhora was alive. No doubt the older brother would have been constantly correcting the y
ounger, making little remarks about how foolish Drazan had been as a sprog. In return, Aleks shared a few stories of his own childhood, speaking fondly of his three brothers. He missed them more than he’d expected, suddenly longing to go back and visit them once he was home safe. He still hadn’t met Torell’s daughter. His chest hurt a little, thinking how eager he’d been to leave his family behind – both biological and the family he’d made for himself in Syvana, and the family he’d hoped to build with Saria in the future. How certain he’d been that he had hardly anything left. He’d been so stupid, so quick to dismiss all the great things in his life and focus on the negatives.

  ‘That should do it, I think,’ Drazan declared, leaning back on his heels. They were both filthy and sweating, staring at the hole they’d created. It wasn’t perfect, but it looked deep enough for their purposes. Standing wearily, the pair moved to where they had left Zhora’s body, preparing to lift him into the makeshift grave. ‘Wait!’ Drazan blurted out just as Aleks bent to grip Zhora’s legs. ‘I . . . I don’t know any funeral rites.’ He looked distressed, and Aleks mentally thanked Grigori for being so serious in his study habits. Aleks knew almost every religious rite off by heart.

  ‘I can do them,’ he assured Drazan, watching him let out a breath of relief. As they lifted, Aleks began to murmur the words quietly, surprised at how easily they came to him. He hadn’t heard them in a long while, but his speech didn’t falter for a second. ‘May the Goddess guide your spirit to your ancestors, and return your body to the earth it came from. Life does not fade, only alter, and may yours be blessed in its future journey,’ he finished, just as they lowered Zhora into the grave.

  ‘Goodbye, brother. I know you’ll be watching over me, wherever the Goddess takes you. I only hope you’ll be proud of what you see,’ Drazan whispered, voice choked as he scattered dirt over Zhora’s form, starting to fill in the hole. Aleks kept his face turned away as he shifted the earth, not wanting to watch Zhora be obscured from them forever. ‘She will find him, right? Even through the Stormlands?’

  ‘All land belongs to her,’ Aleks said. ‘She’ll find him.’ Dying in flight was the one that always caused problems, when bodies could never be returned to the land they came from. But Aleks was confident the Goddess extended as far as this place, even though Kara referred to everything outside the Stormlands as ‘Goddess Land’. Any land was the Goddess’s land.

  ‘Good. That – that’s good,’ Drazan murmured in relief.

  When the grave was filled, the two men stared down at it, finding it hard to believe their third crewmate was in there, lost to them forever. There would be no one to visit his grave, no one to even know where he was buried, except them. It didn’t even look much like a grave.

  Pulling his knife from where he’d stuck it in the ground, Aleks strode over to a nearby tree, easily cutting off a long branch. He cut the branch into three roughly equal pieces and one shorter piece, then looked up at Drazan. ‘Have you got any string? Rope, wire, anything like that?’ Digging into his pocket, Drazan pulled out a coil of copper wire, tossing it to the younger pilot. Within minutes, Aleks had tied the wood pieces together, creating a triangle with a short stick protruding from one side. Drazan’s eyes widened in understanding, and he moved aside to let Aleks push the short stick into the earth at the head of the grave, leaving only the triangle visible. The sign of the gods. It wasn’t much – nothing compared to the carved headstones that were commonly used – but it was better than nothing.

  ‘Thank you,’ Drazan breathed, pulling Aleks into a rib-crushing hug. He buried his face in Aleks’s neck, and the younger man could feel tears wet his skin. ‘Thank you, Aleks.’

  ‘The Goddess can’t miss him now,’ Aleks said quietly, hugging back. ‘She’ll keep him safe.’

  He didn’t know how long they stood there embracing at the side of Zhora’s grave, but they both jumped at a loud screeching noise from deeper in the forest; a bird of some sort.

  ‘We should get back to the ship,’ Drazan murmured, reluctance on his face. ‘See if we can get some work done before nightfall.’

  Stepping back from his friend, Aleks nodded. They needed all the daylight they could get. ‘Right, yeah.’ Drazan paused, turning to the wooden triangle. Kissing his fingers, he pressed them to the top corner; the Goddess’s corner.

  ‘Look after him.’ Aleks moved to copy him, saying a silent prayer, begging for forgiveness and safe passage home. As much as Drazan said it wasn’t Aleks’s fault . . . he had to take at least part of the responsibility.

  Tearing themselves away, they gathered their things, leaving Zhora behind in the peaceful little corner of the forest. The Goddess had him now.

  34

  Instructing Drazan to take a welding flame and hammer and attempt to bend the propeller blades back into shape, Aleks began the much more delicate process of rebuilding the propeller’s mechanism.

  ‘Storms, what was Luka thinking when he put this together?’ Aleks growled to himself, trying to figure out how to connect a tiny gear on one plate to a much larger gear on the other using only one chain. Even though he’d spent a lot of time working on the ship, he wasn’t a mechanic. ‘Think, Aleks, think!’ Luka had shown him how to identify, disassemble and reassemble everything in the engine room. Why couldn’t he remember it? He tried to cast his mind back to being in the engine room with the old man in the beginning, but all his memory gave him was thoughts of Saria and getting home from work early to see her. He should have paid more attention!

  Taking a deep breath, Aleks attempted to focus, looking critically at the mechanism. He’d finished countless machines in the workshop without any real knowledge of the mechanics behind them. The propeller was on a whole different scale, but surely the basics were the same?

  Making sure he’d cleared every piece of broken machinery from the inside of the propeller, he stared at his pile of replacement parts. He could do this.

  Being inside, Aleks didn’t notice when the sun set. He did, however, notice when footsteps overhead signalled Drazan’s return from fixing the propeller. His head poked down through the trapdoor, his face covered with soot but for two rings where his goggles had been. ‘How’s it going?’ he asked, and Aleks grimaced.

  ‘Slowly, but surely. It took me a while to figure things out, but I think I’m getting the hang of it now. Old Luka is mad as a bag of cats – I should’ve known things wouldn’t make logical sense.’ Drazan’s lips quirked into the barest of smiles. ‘How about you?’

  ‘The propeller is all back to rights,’ Drazan reported. ‘The blades aren’t perfect, but it should do enough to get us out by the Stormlands. The natural wind will take us from that point.’ It was going to be hard, going through the Stormlands with their propellers hardly functioning, but they could do it. ‘I was going to start dinner. We skipped lunch.’ Aleks’s stomach rumbled loudly, expressing his agreement for him, and the pair laughed in spite of everything.

  ‘Sounds good. I’ll keep working here. The sooner the mechanism’s sorted, the sooner we can fly.’ He was definitely making progress; if he was lucky, they might even be ready to leave by mid-afternoon the next day. He didn’t want to spend any more time than necessary where they were. They should have taken the enormous dead zone as a sign to leave well alone; the country was not meant for those who relied so much on technology.

  When Drazan called him for dinner, Aleks went to wash first, his hands still covered in dirt and engine oil up to the elbows. Storms, he needed a shower.

  The galley seemed quiet without Zhora there, humming as he cooked and cracking the occasional joke. Aleks noticed Drazan’s hands clenched around his cutlery, and knew he wasn’t the only one feeling the loss in the room. ‘What are you going to do, when we get back?’ he asked tentatively. He knew the two brothers had lived together, and doubted Drazan could afford their house on his own.

  ‘Hadn’t thought much about it,’ Drazan replied with a shrug. ‘Go back to teaching at the flight school, try an
d save up for a little place of my own. Sell the house, I suppose.’

  ‘You’d be welcome to stay at the Compass,’ Aleks offered. ‘Ksenia wouldn’t mind, nor would Bodan. Just until you can find somewhere affordable.’ The last thing he wanted was for Drazan to disappear after everything was over, with no one but himself for company. Drazan paused, smiling around a mouthful of peas.

  ‘Yeah. Yeah, maybe.’

  Knowing they wouldn’t be away much longer, Aleks rifled through the cupboards for the last bottle of Bodan’s cider. He’d been saving it for their final meal before home, but . . . he thought the occasion called for it. Pouring two mugs, he passed one over to Drazan, raising his own. ‘To Zhora,’ he murmured. ‘We wouldn’t have got here without him.’ Drazan smiled, tapping his mug against Aleks’s.

  ‘And it’s still debatable whether we’ll get home without him,’ he added drily. ‘To Zhora. Gods bless, big brother.’

  Drinking deeply, Aleks closed his eyes, wishing the ship would just fix itself and they could go home. He was done with adventuring. He was done with being scared for his life, and the lives of his friends. He was done with not knowing what the next few hours would hold, let alone the next few days. He wanted to be home.

  They drank to Zhora’s memory, and dragged themselves to bed when they could hardly keep their eyes open any longer. When Aleks went to the bathroom in the middle of the night, he found Drazan asleep in the corridor; of course, he had shared his room with Zhora. No one wanted to sleep with ghosts.

  35

  It took all of the morning and most of the afternoon, but eventually Aleks had the left propeller back to rights, sort of. The ship was full of nervous energy as the pair began to prepare it for flight, locking everything away in cupboards and bolting down anything that might move when storms rocked the ship. Breakfast was a veritable feast, now that there was no need to ration the food. Besides, neither man wanted to take to the Stormlands on an empty stomach.